Words are Important

Words are very important.  Words embody meanings we intend and are the substance of our languages.  Words can also be very deceptive if you use them that way.  In fact, there are often two words that seem to mean the same thing, but have very different connotations in the end.  I've heard one of those words recently where, as I interpret it, the intended audience is meant to have understood the other.  Yet, I can't get by what I see as the misuse of a word to couch the true meaning.  The word in question is "regret" which I view as a very different thing from "remorse".

Regret and remorse are not the same at all.  Regret is based on circumstances or events that force one to take an action.  Remorse is a heart-felt, deep emotion that understands pain and leads to true forgiveness.  Regret is cheap and remorse costs a great deal.  I send regrets to an invitation when I either am unable to attend or just don't want to go.  The military sends regrets to the families of men and women killed in action, but they'd prefer not to have to do that at all.  The circumstances are the only thing that brings on the regret.

So why am I rambling about this?  Because I view words as very important.  People need to be very careful about what they say because it provides a view into who they are.  If I express genuine remorse over something I've failed to do or done wrong, I enter into an attempt to restore a breach in trust.  And I do so recognizing that it might never be fully restored for whatever reason.  Regret, essentially, says I'm sorry I got caught and then usually attempts to dismiss it or provide some thinly-veiled excuse.  Not the same thing at all.

My journey on the Crooked Path will never be a perfect one.  But it is undertaken because God has redeemed me.  He sees beyond my regret and invites me to embrace his unbelievable Grace in a way that shows remorse.  In doing so, I model his restorative nature to others who need to know God, not just some formula for "getting out of trouble".  It's an important distinction ... at east I think it is.  You might want to think about it yourself.

Focus on Family

That's not my family, though I do believe the four generations living could probably rival the numbers.  No, it's just a random picture I found to illustrate a point I recently learned.  I now realize I've been coming to it gradually, but it has cemented in my mind.

In his book "Vanishing Grace", Phillip Yancey takes us through a process of revealing who God is and what he intends or asks of us as his children.  We're studying the book in the adult Sunday School class I lead and a current chapter provided a new twist on an old idea ... the central theme of our Bible.  Yancey put it pretty plainly:

God gets his family back.

The words washed over me and those in our class.  Do they not embody the very essence of the Gospel we claim to embrace?  The story God weaves has him starting in a burst of creative energy, watching his family rebel and leave, enacting an eternal plan of rescue and redemption, and finally ends with the biggest family reunion bash in the universe.  God gets his family back!

If we could lay aside our petty arguments and combative opinions, we could see that God is looking to rescue and redeem all those on who he has placed his "thumbprint".  If we can only view everyone - and I do mean EVERYONE - as having an eternal soul with intrinsic worth to our Heavenly Father, perhaps we would more joyfully set aside whatever it is we are doing and instead go about the business of being salt and light, or as Yancey puts it, dispensers of Grace.

The Crooked Path is a journey to reach our Home ... the place where family comes together.  It's part of God's story to us and about us.  My prayer is that I try to live that out just a little more fully than before.